GOODWIN, Justice. A jury having found Jeannace June Freeman guilty of first-degree murder, without recommending life imprisonment, the judgment of death was mandatory. Oregon Constitution, Art. I, § 37. The appeal is, accordingly, automatic. ORS 138.410.

On May 11, 1961, the bodies of two children were found at the bottom of Crooked River canyon in Jefferson County some 300 feet directly below a scenic viewpoint in Peter Skene Ogden State Park. Within a few days the children were tentatively identified as those of one Gertrude Nunez, of Oakland, California. On the evening of May 16, Miss Freeman and Mrs. Nunez were taken into custody by Oakland police officers. Freeman gave the Oakland police a written statement which contained admissions that tended to incriminate her. The next morning Freeman consulted an attorney from the public defender's office. The attorney advised her to remain silent and to fight extradition. She disregarded this advice on both counts.

On May 18, Freeman waived extradition and on May 20 was brought in custody to Bend, Oregon, where

she was lodged in the county jail. The next day, a Sunday, Freeman was taken before a court reporter, and in the presence of the district attorney and two police officers dictated a statement which was used at the trial. In this statement, Freeman did not admit killing either child but she did admit that she was at or near the Crooked River viewpoint at the time the children were thrown over the precipice. (At this time, and throughout all her statements, as well as at the trial, Freeman said that Nunez had thrown both children into the canyon.) Freeman apparently spent Sunday and part of Monday in the company of the police officers. She visited the scene of the crime, and told the police where the children's clothing could be found.

Nunez, meanwhile, was apparently telling the police the story she was later to tell the jury in the case at bar, i. e., that she had thrown her four-year-old daughter into the canyon and that Freeman had thrown the six-year-old boy into the canyon.

On Monday, May 22, Freeman was taken before a justice of the peace in Jefferson County and there she apparently joined in a request by the district attorney for a continuance of the preliminary examination required by ORS 133.510 et seq. The record does not reveal the date of the adjourned examination, but it must have occurred within a day or two, for on May 29 Freeman and Nunez were separately indicted for the first-degree murder of each child. The state elected to try Freeman first for the murder of the boy. Nunez pleaded guilty to the murder of the girl.

The record reveals that counsel was appointed for Freeman on June 2. After certain motions and demurrers were interposed and ruled upon, an amended indictment was filed. On September 5, 1961, the trial

commenced. It continued through September 15. The assignments of error all challenge rulings of the court in receiving certain evidence. (The appeal also concerns the legal significance of the events which occurred between Freeman's arrest on May 16 and the appointment of her defense counsel on June 2, but these questions do not involve rulings made at the trial.) We shall first consider the assignments of error.

Three assignments of error challenge the admissibility of testimony from medical and other witnesses concerning the condition of the body of the girl. Timely objection was made on the ground that such testimony was irrelevant under an indictment which charged Freeman with killing the boy. Freeman contends that most, if not all, the evidence about the death of the girl was prejudicial to Freeman's defense, and that the prejudice thereof outweighed any probative value such testimony might have had in her case.

It was the state's theory of the case that the killing of the two children was planned and carried out by Freeman and Nunez in order to rid themselves of the inconvenience of having small children about the premises where Freeman and Nunez were carrying on a lesbian relationship. (Freeman admitted the character of the relationship.) Nunez testified without objection that Freeman felt that the children interfered with the enjoyment of their relationship, and that the two agreed that the children should be disposed of. Nunez also testified that she and Freeman made plans to do away with the children while driving with the children from Oakland, California, to the scene of the crime.

The state contended, and the proof tended to show, that the murders were committed ...

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